I spent five years at Forbes writing about business and leadership, attracting nearly one million unique visitors to Forbes.com each month. While here, I assistant edited the annual World’s 100 Most Powerful Women package and helped launch and grow ForbesWoman.com. I've appeared on CBS, CNBC, MSNBC and E Entertainment and speak often at conferences and events on women's leadership topics. I graduated summa cum laude from New York University with degrees in journalism and sociology and was honored with a best in business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) in 2012. My work has appeared in Businessweek, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Aesthete and Acura Style. I live in New York City with my husband and can be found on Twitter @Jenna_Goudreau, Facebook, and Google+.

Why Jack Welch Is Spectacularly Stupid When It Comes To Women

The father of the performance culture and former General Electric chairman and chief Jack Welch thinks women just aren’t working hard enough.

At a Women in the Economy conference held by The Wall Street Journal this week, Welch, alongside his wife Suzy, told a group of women that the only thing that would aid their advancement is getting results. “Over deliver,” he said. “Performance is it!” The female audience members balked, accusing him of understanding nothing about cultural biases and how they shape the perception of performance.

This isn’t the first time Welch has faced the keen female glare. At a Society for Human Resource Management conference in 2009, he said: “There’s no such thing as work-life balance… We’d love to have more women moving up faster. But they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.” The comments prompted attendees, mostly women, to shake their heads in disapproval and call Welch “old-fashioned” and “out of touch.” Nancy McKinstry, CEO of publisher Wolters Kluwer, said he was just wrong, noting that she’d taken maternity leaves with each of her two children.

It should be no surprise to anyone breathing that performance matters. But by the way Welch framed this conversation, one would infer that he assumes women are just 3% of corporate CEOs, 7% of top earners, 14% of executive officers and 16% of board members because they’re slacking off.

Meanwhile, a recent study in the Harvard Business Review of 7,280 business leaders found that women outperformed men in 12 out of 16 competencies that comprise outstanding leadership. In the remaining four categories, men and women scored evenly. Perhaps most interesting, two of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree were taking initiative and driving for results. This mirrors a groundbreaking 2009 study by INSEAD of 3,000 executives and 22,000 of their colleagues that discovered women ranked higher than men in almost every category of leadership.

Furthermore, according to a recent survey of 5,000 U.S. workers by workplace research firm theFIT, women work more than men. In fact, 54% of women vs. 41% of men reported working 9 to 11 hours a day, and 7% of women vs. 5% of men reported working more than 11 hours a day. Women are also more likely to work 6 to 7 days a week (11% vs. 7%), more willing to do work on vacation (68% vs. 62%), and less likely to lie about a “sick day” (14% vs. 20%).

Women say they need to work harder than men to prove themselves, that they feel constant pressure to never make a mistake and always show their value to the organization. And yet…the leadership gap.

Well, since Welch’s theory is blown, what might really be going on? KeyCorp’s Beth Mooney, who last year became the first female chief of a top-20 U.S. bank, says it can be discouraging for women to look up the organizational ladder and see only men at the top. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg believes women need to speak up and promote themselves more, and choose a partner who can equally share the responsibilities at home. Ernst & Young’s Beth Brooke frequently speaks about needing a “critical mass” of women at the top, so that women’s voices are heard. In fact, studies show when companies have 30% women in senior positions, they begin to create cultures supportive of women’s advancement and the gender wage gap narrows. IBM’s new chief Ginni Rometty may not say it out loud but this year proved, on a national scale, that boys clubs are alive and well.

At an event last year, Xerox CEO Ursula Burnstold me: “If you look at just pure genetics, there was no gene—an intelligence gene, a capability gene, a work-hard gene—that was removed from women. So why would it be any different? There are some structural issues that we have to fix, like having men more engaged and involved in family, but there is no reason to believe whatsoever that women are any less capable.”

Honestly, I’d question just how well Jack Welch prepared for his performance pep-talk that spectacularly underperformed. Clearly, he hadn’t done his research.

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Jenna, thank you for your article. I believe that being offended, especially by someone’s beliefs, is a choice, and becoming offended does not justify ad hominem attacks. I believe that any type of reasoning or emotion that frames women as victims of male oppression only causes harm, especially to women as there is nothing more poisonous to one’s soul than feeling like a victim. Life is complicated and despite what many try to teach, women and men are very different and make different choices. I do not see any benefit in insisting that men and women be at parity in every aspect of life. To demand this is to ignore the uniquely wonderful differences between the sexes.

1. I think he can take it. 2. I don’t feel like a victim, and I don’t believe any women represented in this article expressed that sentiment. That doesn’t mean, however, that there are no structural problems. 3. The incredible and astounding leadership gap that currently exists can not be explained away by women’s choices or their capabilities.

The fact that there is a leadership gap is not in question. Whether it is actually a problem or that it needs to be “solved” and that it is due to systematic bias, sexism or oppression is in question. Not every perceived unfairness or gap in the world can be explained away by race, gender or class which many are wont to due.

1. He’s Jack Welch and you called him stupid. Since you’ve called him that, it’s either him or you. He’s Jack Welch.

You (the author and women, in general) have a chance (because he is willing) to dialogue with Jack Welch (the pinnacle and the coach), and your take is that he’s stupid?

2. Your social justice/structural conflict argument requires that there be a bad guy. There is no bad guy, here. See point 1 and pick your battles.

3. Your social justice/structural conflict argument suffers from over-reliance on statistics. a. Federal Judges are tenured and likely to entertain ‘if it smells like a fish’ arguments. CEO’s are a different animal because, to sum up ‘Winning’, leaders cause either success or failure and are accountable for same. You ask Tyler Shaw to identify any upside to the leadership gap, but as the author of the article you might identify an instance of a company that failed because it didn’t promote women. I’ll leave to my betters whether, ex post, a successful company should have hired more women to senior positions. b.Even I know that the business world uses case studies. The author fails to cite even one. I’m sure the critical studies crowd has produced something. c. Jack Welch is the one guy who could wave a wand and make something happen for you, no matter what the evidence. See point 1.

Jack Welch has always said “Performance is it!” GE had to be 1st or 2nd in a market or Welch was pulling the plug.

1. Jack Welch made no statement about the capabilities of women. 2. Jack Welch spoke about choices and priorities. He is aware of how choices lead to outcomes in business. He is the world’s expert on how priorities affect business leadership. See point 1.

Stupid *about women*. America is founded on the idea of fairness: If you work hard and apply yourself, you get ahead. Clearly, there are many examples to the contrary. Structural arguments are about the improper functioning of a system, not a “bad” individual. As stated in the lead line of the article, I’m aware of his feelings about performance.

Chiguy31 this is absolutely the right title for the article. Just expresses a woman’s view of a careless man’s speech who is recognized so highly worldwide for his leadership thinking & advise. Just in a careless statement he diminished the hard work that women have been putting in to perform better. Women do work twice as harder than men to get the same level of recognition & this is more than true. I respect your comment to be courteous & not be harsh in criticisizing his comments but you have no idea what it means to be a woman to be working till ends meet & to be advised to perform more than what they are doing to get the same respect another colleague in the same organization receives!!